devrel, content, going out on your own w/ aaron francis

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auto-generated from the audio, so expect a few typos. the audio is the source of truth.

so we can chitchat some more all right live go everybody good morning Tik Tock we are live but uh we're not live I'm just waiting for it to hit the in interwebs real quick uh let's see here say hey if you are I just got the email about we're live on YouTube and we are good on LinkedIn that was really fast that was a lot faster LinkedIn coming through today all right sweet what's going everybody good morning happy hump day we made it halfway through the week uh if you're not wearing black today you didn't get the invite uh you didn't get the memo one

of the two um so uh please go change your shirts and uh come back to us but um really excited to hang out with Aaron today um you know again the power of Twitter X and the power of DMs I saw I saw uh chantastic Michael Cham who I interviewed a few weeks ago on the show I saw a video that he did I highly recommend it actually Aaron actually uh in preparation for this week I put that video I link to that video uh in my email newsletter because it's so good I have like a Content recommendations one but highly recommend go to go

to chantastic YouTube check out Aaron francis's uh interview was really good but I saw it and I was telling Aaron I was like you know there needs to be more authenticity especially among dudes and he was incredibly authentic and so um I'm really happy to have him on to have more of authentic conversation um so for those of you watching tune in say hey we' love to hear from you um we're starting to get some comments Michael it's good to hear from from you good to see you um but say hey we love to hear from you again I was telling Aaron this backstage been

do this for four years now what I've realized over the course of the last nine months is this is a networking platform right you get to show up you get to drink some coffee in your pajamas or your black t-shirts and you get to hear two dudes or or two people talking um and there you go exactly um and so uh please comment say hey we have people from all around the world tuning in which is always really cool um and then also second thing ask questions right Aaron is a wealth of knowledge um and so I want you to ask questions this is a

time um this is a time where you can ask him questions and he doesn't bill you for it for once so please take advantage of that um Aaron's like wait a minute um so also I want to do another thing too I kind of get away from it I want to celebrate you today I feel like I I feel like we as human beings we're always on to the next thing right so we get a promotion we're like when's my next promotion we get a raise and when's my next raise and so if you've if you've got a title change or you deploy code on

a Friday and didn't burn the house down please throw it up in the comments um I I really want to celebrate you today um even even if you feel weird celebrating yourself throw thr throw some flowers up for uh for for some other people as well um let's see here uh EMT it's good to see you buddy RJ what what's cooking y'all Richie it's good to see you Chris and then my goalie from hockey Kent what's going on buddy are we skating no we're not skating tonight we're not skating tonight just FYI so um uh but thanks for tuning in y'all want to give a

shout out to my partners real quick and I'll stop yapping first and foremost that conference um I have three free tickets left so if you want to go to that that conference in Wisconsin um it's an amazing event I keynoted last year this year they're having Mark uh Thompson from angular and they have Kent the great Kent C dods uh key noting as well so go check that out it's a great event highly recommend um again if you want a ticket let me know and also I want to give a shout out to render ATL the premier Platinum Pro sponsor whatever you want to call

it it's gonna be a heck of a Time June 12th through 14th I will be there it's gonna be great check it out uh it's gonna be fantastic so um and we got a few more comments coming in this morning morning um Travis it's good to see you will Johnson it's good to see you buddy the goats um uh last week I've had a team retreat in Mexico yeah again em it's been awesome following your journey buddy it's really really really cool all right Aaron enough this isn't this is your show today not mine so let's give the people what they want man who are

you what do you do we'll go from there well thanks for having me um I'm excited excited to be here this live stuff is cool I'm seeing all these comment yeah I'm seeing all these comments pop in I'm like this is awesome I got to do this more often um yeah so my name's Aaron Francis uh I'm a software developer by trade I suppose um an accountant by schooling um I haven't done that in a long time but now I'm out on my own with a friend so we're out on our own um and I'm excited to talk about what we're up to so we

can we can talk about anything so y'all ask questions Taylor I'm sure you've got some queued up but yeah I'm kind of an open book here I love all right so first off I want to talk about your story real quick right I mean and again for those of you tuned in yesterday's pod I've had it's been a string of guests and it hasn't been intentional it's just kind of happened because it's the way the market is why I love this show it kind of just es and flows with the market but Aon you you left a full-time job right I did yeah I feel

like that's happening more in Vogue now can you just talk about your experience right I mean obviously I'm sure it wasn't easy but kind of walk me through just your career to high level and sure obviously that decision to go on your own yeah you're you're an expert uh interviewer because you said you left a full-time job which is very generous I got laid off I mean that's the honest truth but that's good good for you for making me look good um so yeah I was at Planet scale which is a databased company up until well they're still a databased company I was there up

until you know uh maybe two months ago um when they laid off you know the sales organization thek marketing organization a few Engineers um and I was in the marketing org and that was it game over so I was on paternity leave I was about to come back on a Friday and I got laid off on a Wednesday and I was like shoot that was unex you can C if you want by the way you can let I appreciate that um so I said shoot and a few other things and then was like all right well now now what do I do you know I've

I was on fraternity leave because we just had our second set of twins uh yeah forther record backstage I was catching ear and he goes I was like how many kids you guys he goes he goes we have two sets of twins my mind broke for a second yeah two two sets of twins that are all under three so we have two two-year-olds and two five-month olds um you know and at that time they were three months old and I just lost my job and I was like well F what am I going to do now um so yeah I was at Planet scale for

maybe a year and a half and my primary responsibility there was um content so I made a bunch buch of database videos I did a full-on database course um that was like an eight hour course so super duper long very in-depth um before that I was uh you know I was a software developer at a small local company here in Texas um and now I'm just out there I'm just out there man I'm out there in the market so that's kind of a little bit of my backstory there I'll pause there for a second yeah absolutely got got some comments coming in two sets of

twins absolute mad when's the third set coming yeah never we're I am taking steps to make sure that that never happens yeah oh my gosh it's good to see y'all this morning we got definitely crew this morning this is really really cool all right so um man so EMT comes in and I want to talk about this and kind of more just high level I I you know my yesterday's yesterday's conversation was exact same thing I said I feel like the two things that people freak out about and that more people don't go out on their own is benefits Y and really the first few

things to I don't want to get caught up in like setting up an LLC and all that stuff that that's just that people will be bored and like to sign off but like can you just talk about some steps that you did when you got laid off to kind of set the framework for other folks yeah absolutely so I got laid off I think on like you know March 6th or something and that matters because no matter you know when you get laid off you get benefits through the end of that month um and so it's kind of I don't know if they did it

on purpose but it's kind of a homey move to lay everybody off at the beginning of the month right because you at least get benefits through the end of the month um I got Cobra which is uh something in the US that allows you to keep your employer uh Health Care coverage but you pay for it so I got Cobra covered for another month so at that point you know it's March 6th and I'm thinking I've got health insurance through the end of April which was yesterday um so you know I'm freaking out and I had been listen list to a podcast for forever where

one of the guys has like a Marketplace healthc care startup and so I reached out to him immediately and I was like hey I know that you do something with the health insurance Marketplace I'll be honest I don't know what you do can you help me and so I talked to this independent agent and he walked me through like got on a call and walked me through the um the HealthCare Marketplace and the thing that I didn't know that I discovered was there are um there are this is all us specific by the way there are healthc care like there tax credits and so if

you just go to the open market you can buy a plan but if you know what you're doing you can get tax credits off upfront so that made my health insurance like instead of you know $2,200 a month it made it like $900 a month and that was the point where I was like oh okay I can do this this is like we're going to have health insurance we looked at cost sharing plans which are like traditionally religious which is fine um with me but I have type 1 diabetes and they don't allow they don't allow those um those conditions into the cost sharing plan

because we're terribly expensive which is why I need insurance so we ended up going with a Marketplace plan with some some tax incentives yeah I love that and like for me so when I left my last company um I didn't know what to do and I called my financial adviser and I went with Farm Bureau I don't know it's like a public plan but it was better than anything I had at my last company anyway so you know again like I I don't this may be naive of me but but I I don't think it's quite as huge of a roadblock as most people think

but I think you got to ask right you ask your your contact I asked my contact and now big time my family has benefits that now it's a little annoying because everything they don't they don't cover initially because they think it's pre-existing it's not but it's a whole another conversation of itself but for the most part part my deductible and my cost per month is better than my last company so yeah yeah exactly find somebody that knows what they're doing that's my that's my advice on that exactly exactly um Kevin that's why I got off cost sharing plans I didn't trust them to cover me

yeah I know and again I don't this isn't a benefit live show so um we could have a whole another conversation about that um so Ain I want to ask you this man like yeah you know what are you doing for like Business Development like how are you kind of like getting putting yourself out there because that's another thing right it's the benefits it's getting the business set up which we won't get into but then it's really going out and prospecting which I don't think people realize how much work that is yeah yeah I so I think my my biggest point on on that would

be you got to start way before you think it's time um and so like I when I you know when I got laid off from planet scale I tweeted that same day hey I just got laid off and that you know there were more words but that tweet got 500,000 Impressions which just like completely blew my mind and I think the reason it got that much attention was because of the prior three years of work that I had been doing and so I my like one of the things that I'm always on about is like putting yourself out there and Publishing your work and like

making stuff that you do public public because it will increase the chances of good things happening now what are those good things I can't guarantee anything so if you're like optimizing for a single particular outcome I don't really have a lot of advice but if you're optimizing for I want my life to be better somehow well shoot my advice is like write a blog post and put it out there and make a video and put it out there and tweet about things that you're working on um and something is going to happen and in my in my story my life many things have happened up

to and including when I got laid off I had 30 calls scheduled the next day and so like that is a result of wait wait wait wait wait wait wait that tweet Garner 30 calls yes I had I was waiting sir I was waiting out of my inbox and my Twitter DMS props to you man that gives me Goosebump that gives me thanks yeah I think it's like it gave it gave me goosebumps and I was like I don't think it I think it's really hard to have an accurate view of how other people see you and so all of this time I've been doing

all of this work and thinking like oh I'm I'm doing a good job and like coming from coming from like a Evangelical religious background and continuing in that tradition as an Evangelical religious person you're you're taught like you don't do not be proud like be be ye not proud right Southern Baptist you keep your mouth SE not heard man exactly and like there's a good there's there's something good about that like understanding your position as you know in our faith right that's a good thing that can also mean that you just really you don't take time to like say like you were saying at the

beginning give give yourself some flowers like you just really don't take time to do that that's not a a tradition that we have and so there I think are moments where um your perception of yourself can lag and then it catches up like it's it's Snappy right and so like this whole time I'm doing all this work and I'm thinking wow I'm doing I'm doing good work and this is the right thing to do is work hard and then something happens and you realize oh wow there are a lot of people on my team I didn't know that like yeah I knew that there were

like friends that we talked to on Twitter like we hang out and we're Buds and we see each other at conferences and we're Buds and but then this happens and people DM you and you're like hey man whatever it takes I I got your back it's like yeah oh this is different this is something that I didn't really fully understand until my moment of need and so yeah so that like you know that leads into uh a bunch of interviews which I would I I took in good faith and was like man if there's a job out there that's awesome and lines up with where

I want to go with my life I'm gonna freaking take it because I got four kids and a stay-at home life right and so that was that was step one was like let's see what the world has to offer in terms of jobs and I did and there were a lot of wonderful people and several of the people in the interviews were like dude you don't need to come work here you need to start your own thing literally in the interview yes CEOs in the interviews the CEOs were saying this I was told multiple times that too yes it's wild so what are your thoughts

on that like obviously chose to be on your own I chose to go with a company when literally my CEO currently was like why do you want to join us yeah um it was another I think several things conspired it was another moment where I like my lagging perception of reality caught up and I was like maybe I do have this thing like if other people are telling me this if other people are telling me this um without prompting that means if I prompted people I bet a lot more people would tell me this the fact that it's bubbled up to unprompted is like sh

that's something and then I kind of thought like this is the perfect moment professionally to go out on my own this is the worst moment F in terms of family to go out on my own but professionally this is the perfect moment to go out on my own because a few things I think I had done a a really good job at Planet scale and I think the record will show I did a great job yeah what was your stat on YouTube from the conversation you had with Chan you grew it substantially yeah from like a thousand to like 34,000 in like six months before

I left on fraternity leave yeah yeah I hope my boss doesn't hear that because I'm not gonna be able to do that I'm not as as Aaron yeah so I I and like the the database course that I did for Planet scale just like completely blew it out of the water and terms of numbers and so all these things are conspiring right the the timing the timing works out great because I happened to kind of become like the public face of Planet scale in this little niche you know in Twitter Youtube and that's a tricky spot to be in like because then you kind of

like personally I felt like oh I can't leave I can't like leave them high and dry after like kind of weaseling my way into being the public face I was like well you know this is a great company I'm going to stay here because that's the right thing to do boom I got let go right no fault of my own and so now it's not like Oh Aaron became the face and then turned around and left it's like no I I'm I'm the no fault person and I can just put hang out a shingle and so like leaving of no fault of my own and

having like the the attention which is fleeting but I had the attention for a moment on Twitter I thought this is my opportunity to leverage that into going out on my own and now like now is the best time to try it because if I fail which is entirely possible if I fail I come back in six months to these people that I interviewed with and said like hey I tried to live the dream like I tried to live the American dream and I I couldn't pull it off can I have a job that's not so bad right if I if I like went out

and was like no I'm going to go work for your competitors and then quit after three months and come to you for a job then it would be like ooh kind of icky but it's it's like I tried to live my dreams right and I fell a little bit short who's gonna who's going to fault me for that nobody exactly D David goes oh I thought he was just gonna say 34 for a second 34,000 makes much yeah yeah just from from from from one to 34 from 1 to 34 yeah it's all my extended family so all right there's so much I want to

cover um and so the first thing I I want to kind of get into devil marketing um in full transparency I'm going to use this time to pick your brain for me toally transparent so I I feel like marketing is Shifting okay like tremendously this is again my hot take I I don't think people need marketing as much as they do they need content Community okay I also think that companies need to have an Aaron or a Taylor or a Michael Chan or these figures because people relate to people and not companies like people want to hear from people not brands I'm GNA leave that

there pick it apart yes or no disagree with me I don't care what are your thoughts um fully agree about people want to connect with people um and so I like I don't really have a lot of strong opinions on what devr or Dev advocacy is or isn't because I've never been a devell person I've never been a Dev Advocate and I understand that those communities have like lots of history and lots of like culture and like I don't know I'm just not a part of that at my role my role at Planet scale was a developer educator and that's that's the place where I

like to be because I think in like in my heart I want to teach people and I think teaching is like pure and Noble I also think that teaching happens to be great marketing like um I think if you can come to an audience and say I'm going to teach you how to do something that you need to know and as an ancillary benefit you're going to learn about a product or service or company then developers will pay attention I think if you come if you come to developers specifically this this is so interesting because you see you see it on Twitter you hear it

on Hecker news all the time developers hate marketing well maybe developers just hate bad marketing like developers like things that are interesting things that are entertaining things that are helpful we're humans too like we we're not that different we just don't like being like tricked with popups and you know whatever else right whatever traditional marketing is I don't super know I think the pure and undefiled marketing is teach them how to do something and associate good feelings between them and the company that you represent I think that's like that's the easiest way to to do marketing but you need a teacher you need a person

to do it and I think that's where Dev Ed comes in I don't know necessarily about advocacy or relations but I think Dev Ed comes in in that place where you just say hey I love to teach let me teach and you can get paid by a company to do it and the company gets the benefit so I think there's something nice and symbiotic about that absolutely where where do you think a lot of companies are missing the mark right now like just just in regards to putting out content you know I haven't gotten a time to I actually texted Michael Chan I was like

you need to put your on audio because I want to hear all your conversations I don't have time to watch them on YouTube but that conversation with Theo around yeah and I haven't I haven't listened to it yet but basically the caption was like get rid of company's YouTubes which is fascinating because I totally disagree with right I told Theo this I I've told him this on on Twitter many times like so you know to to recap Theo and Chan went on and Theo was like you need to companies need to delete their YouTube channels because um it's not it's not working and well what

you did yeah there's one glaring exception I think one one that I can think of um you know and Theo has said publicly plant skill was the only company to make it work and so it's like ah so it can work but I think the the place where a lot of companies go wrong frankly is um they look at the medium instead of the platform so the medium is video right let's say A medium is video so you have a video let's say it's a webinar recording right terribly interesting webinars you have a webinar recording and you're like where can I put video I can

put video on YouTube and you put your webinar recording on YouTube it becomes like a wasteland most YouTube people watch it yeah and you're like what are we doing why this is not anything and so then companies will look at YouTube be like oh YouTube doesn't work like yeah because you're putting webinars on there and you're literally competing with uh mares brownley who's destroying you know Humane Ai and uh Mr Beast who's living in a fake abandoned city for a week and you're like what about my webinar on six ways to secure your endpoints you're like nobody cares nobody cares about that and so I

think where a lot of people a lot of companies are missing the Mark is they're not taking into account the platform what does YouTube what does YouTube want what does Twitter want what does LinkedIn demand all different too and and and that's what I'm doing completely different I can I am very good on Twitter I go to LinkedIn and I'm like I have no idea how to interact like I have no idea how to make it on this platform and on Twitter it's like oh man this is it's in my blood but on LinkedIn it's totally different I think companies say video YouTube done it's

like yeah there's a little bit more there yeah 100% 100% oh man this is so good all right what else um I want to talk about man talk about content I know we mentioned it but like I feel like so many people are terrified to get started I saw a video on Twitter yesterday it was Mars browny's very first like he was a kid did you see that I saw that I was like who is it it didn't look like him and like it's just where he's at now I I mean I tweeted it before we went live I saw a video myself from just

four years ago I used to record everything in horizontal I sat down for three minutes and like posted everything in one take and so I was like man I've come a long way but like I had to get started so can you kind of give some general thoughts on that yeah absolutely I think um first of all I think everyone is scared to put themselves out there I think that is the human condition and so if you feel that way like so everybody else feels that way too um and if you feel like oh man the people that put themselves out there must not be

afraid of putting themselves out there wrong I mean I can't speak for everybody I can speak for myself and some of my friends no super wrong still still scary every time um but I think I would go back to the point of like if you want to optimize for a more opportunistic life if you want good things to like happen to fall into your lap the most durable and repeatable way that I have found to make that happen is to have little Advocates out there championing you as a person and those little Advocates are blog posts and tweets and YouTube videos and they're all poting

it's like this is your distributed resume that anyone can happen across at any point in time and think oh look that person Aaron is already doing the job that we're trying to hire for he's just doing it for himself like maybe we should just hire bring him in house I he's drisk he's already der risk I I know that he can do the thing and so that's that's what I would say on like why you should do it in terms of like getting over your fears I don't know that like um it's not been useful for me to try to get over the fear but

rather to say that like this fear doesn't control me or doesn't matter as much because I think my greater my greater fear is that I reached the end of my career and think I could have done a lot more if only I just hadn't been scared of what people thought of me like that is kind of terrifying to think I could end up you know 65 years old looking back and thinking if I had been a little bit braver I wonder what I could have done and there are going to be regrets that I have at 65 but if I know some of them now

I'm going to try to make sure that I don't end up there right so I may look back I may look back in my career and say like oh that choice to go out on your own yeah that was okay you you know it didn't end up that great but I much rather would take a risk out of like more bravery than more safety um because I'm afraid I think I'm afraid of reaching reaching the end of my career and thinking God I wish you had tried harder I wish you had not been so scared like that's terrifying to me so that's kind of how

I get there I don't know if that resonates with other people but that's what that's what made made me move I love that I love that so much there's a few questions coming I and maybe we get a little tactical here do you have a hard stop in five minutes no okay what do I have to do Taylor I don't have a job stop you're busy we were talking about it backstage shut up all right so let's get a little let's get a little tactical here this is what I like about the show where should webinars or live streams go I'm gonna let you answer

this first talk about structuring this because I because I'm literally actively doing this with gun right now yeah that's a great question um I think you can I think you can like have them just purely listed on on your website I feel like no one in history has gone to YouTube looking specifically for a webinar that's just that's just my guess um you can also like you could also have a second Channel because I think the the Fe my fear with just throwing webinars on YouTube is YouTube wants to find the audience for your videos slash for your channel right and so if you're putting

5 to 8 minutes videos about we'll just go back to databases about my sequel on there and it's like little fun infotainment education tainment you're putting those on there and then you have a one and a half hour webinar that nobody watches YouTube's gonna be like what is going on with this channel like some of these videos are really good some of them don't work at all like who should we push this these videos this channel to and so you could separate them out to be like sales enablement and like platform native you could do that I think that's that's probably fine like a lot

of people will put um you see like uh you know my first million or Joe Rogan or some Tim Ferris they have like Eclipse Channel and then like the full you know they they kind of separate the channel based on like is it long form or is it like quick hits yeah so so I'm gonna I'm actually gonna share my screen real quick this is what we did Roselle and Roselle thanks for this question I appreciate you also Roselle as a former guest of the show um so this is this is what I what what we've done and Aaron I mean you could pick it

apart too um but let's see here so shout out to Jason Torres he's actually been kind of The Mastermind behind this so what we've done is we figured out kind of the main pillars for my YouTube and that's my my my weekly Vlogs that I do educational content around the job search conference talks and other like long form podcast right that I'm on with other people so we kind of buil that out but one thing that people don't take advantage of is the playlists so I want to talk about this and this is what I would do is what we've done is I want to

make it really easy my whole goal for my YouTube is to make it easy for a developer to come to my YouTube and find places quickly to go to to to be able to navigate all this so my live solos we separate out my lives with my guests we separate out because they're very different right eron and I are kind of high level we're getting tactical my live with just me is like very tactical like open up LinkedIn like a person's comment send a DM educational content conference content and Vlog content I would leverage playlist people don't leverage playlists enough Aaron what are your thoughts

on this love it yep I think you can leverage playlists you can also you can also like um publish a video and I forget what the actual setting is but like basically publish this video but don't notify my subscribers and I think that's another good another good thing you can do for like more sales enablement stuff um I I didn't know you could do that that's cool yeah yeah and I think people usually do that for like um you know the the featured trailer they want to like have a featured trailer on the channel but it's not like I'm pushing this video out um so

you could do that throw it in a playlist publish it but don't like notify subscribers or whatever the setting is um and then people you can then direct people because I I I get it YouTube's a great place to host video it's free everyone knows how to use it and so I wouldn't say don't put them on YouTube but I would say be thoughtful be thoughtful about it and separate Channel separate playlist whatever just I think be thoughtful about it yeah it says um Ryan goes I think YouTube is a great place for live streams webinars to go but you have to be able to

funnel your audience there like email blast yeah so we're getting very tactical here right this is top of the funnel bottom of the funnel how do you this is a very terrible term but massage people through the process right I I saw a Tik Tok the other day in Aram curious here thoughts that marketing is essentially changed and that you don't old marketing is creating ad creating a bill board incentivize that person to buy that person goes directly to your website your catalog and they buy now it's very much like well I want to follow the brand I want to learn about the brand oh

Brand's got a Discord I want to hop in because I'm passionate about let's say they're a Health Fitness Company I'm passion about health I want to jump in the Discord see what they're talking about but then I want to get on their email newsletter I saw and and they kind of and then then they buy right so it's kind of this really long form thing so get this is incredibly important thoughts on this Aon yeah I I don't know um I don't know enough about the wider marketing world to say with certainty like I don't know enough about you know the Mad Men to say

sure necessarily but I think within our little sphere in our little space it seems to me like everything is going much more personal like it just like you even see it from Microsoft for goodness sakes like every everything is going more personal personalities within companies are coming forward um and kind of being the tip of the spear in terms of marketing and I think that I don't know what it's a reaction to but I get it like people want to connect with people I think that has been true forever yeah um and there's a possibility I don't I I I I'm hesitant to to speak

in absolutes but there's a possibility that AI is driving this push towards Humanity like there may be such a thing that we are um seeing more and more AI generated stuff including blog posts and images that we're like God I just want to connect with a human preach 100% that's my that's my guess I'm not you know I'm not studied I don't know the research but I am I I go on Vibes and that's my vibe well I'm gonna tell you this listen I'm not I mean I went to school for marketing but I didn't learn anything about marketing I will tell you this I

I think some of the best marketers I've seen are don't have a traditional background like like one of my buddies who helps me manage my content um he said that it's gonna be fascinating with when Mr Beast takes over like a creative director spot for like a fortune 10 company because because I think it's that type of out-of thebox thinking now that probably needs to start happening in in marketing to really get eyeballs yeah so yeah I think so and I think um I realiz like I think I have come to realize that that distribution is just so incredibly one important and two hard to

come by or the distribution at scale across all social is incredibly incredibly difficult to come by and that was one of the things that you know I was talking with uh my partner Steve Steve the the editor formerly he's now producer Steve I was talking to producer Steve about this back when we were like hey are we going to go out on our own and one of the things that kept coming up was like companies want distribution you Aaron have distribution we can make something work here correct and that was when I realized like yeah we can make we can make something work here yep

100 per.

um Ryan comes in here what Taylor said I gotta sample the product then I gotta see if I want more I watched many of Roselle's lives but I wouldn't have known about them if I didn't get to know her in this format there you go um Chris connecting with others at a human level goes farther than just a billboard my previous work at Apple they teach us a bit about that point how a product would enrich someone's lives and it's different for each and every person 100 per.

um RJ comes in here devell has been huge in that space having a real face yeah again I I I really think I think companies need a point person I just I I just I just think they do I think they need somebody like I want to give Michelle a shout out for g2i right like Michelle and her work at react Miami like when I I when I think of react when I think of GTI I think of Michelle also Gabe I love Gabe to death but like I think of Michelle she's out there she's public right she's kind of that face and I think

it's incredibly important yeah you look at versel they've got you know both guo and leer Rob yeah I mean yep micro Microsoft has a ton of people but Scott Hanselman has been out there for you know Forever at this point and it's like the reason I'm uh the reason I'm cautious to say like our part of the world is I am under no illusions that that you know Microsoft is not like doing Enterprise deal like they're not relying on Scott Hanselman on Twitter sure and they're not you know versel is not relying on ler Rob and guo on on Twitter but it's an effective way

to reach this part of the world corre and you know as a part of a larger strategy I think it's extremely I think it's extremely important I know that not all developers are on Twitter I know that Enterprise deals rarely happen from you know a tweet but the whole thing is kind of together it's it all has to be cohesive yeah absolutely all right as we wrap up here I want to kind of leave this uh last few minutes just for you any words of encouragement for people on the job search any other kind of wise words of wisdom before we wrap up yeah I

mean if you're on the job search uh I would go I would go and listen to the most recent podcast by Ben orstein the the Tuple podcast tole um with uh Thorston ball and he talks about how he ended up working at I think it's Zed um but the the tldr the TLD DL if you don't listen um the tldl is like the number of people that follow the directions when applying to a job is like five or 10 per.

it's you go go go look go look at some of Adam Wavin of Tailwind CSS or Tailwind Labs go look at some of his recent tweets as he's been hiring and he says literally 10% of people follow the directions and so my I think my I haven't I haven't submitted a resume in 15 years 20 years I don't know since I since I started at ernston young as an accountant I haven't submitted a resum status right there man yeah seriously and I think the reason is is not because I'm like not because I'm better but because I'm Different like I instead of submitting instead of

submitting a resume I like say hey I read your job application here's what I think you're looking for here are examples of me having done that thing already and this goes back to you got to have public examples of your work like the way to stand out is to follow the directions and point to public examples of your work and like I don't know maybe write a little note that's like hey Adam I you know if you're applying for Tailwind Labs hey Adam been following you for years here's what I like here's how I think I can help um here are some links to what

I'm doing that will set you apart from like almost everyone else that applies that just sends in a cover or no cover letter at all and just a blank resume so I think just like put in a little bit of effort and you can stand out in front of almost everybody I posted I'm so glad you brought this up I I posted something yesterday in our the the Nashville Tech has like a big slack Channel and I was working on a uiux job we needed help filling and I post I was like Hey email me I didn't say DM me I said email me yep

yep everybody dm' me except one person guess who I went with I can only imagine yep follow directions people I ain't got time to S through DMs send me an email and we'll move back I also like you see stuff like like dream opportunities come up like Taylor otwell of larl tweeting like hey I want to hire I want to hire a video person and people just respond on Twitter and say uh I would love to have that job you're like so much laziness so much laziness that you're shooting your shot with that like that's the way that you're going to say I want to

work at laral and it's just like yo come on I know so yeah it it's hard like I totally get it searching for a job sucks it's discouraging it's depressing but you gotta like you gotta hang in there and put your best foot forward and just spamming the inbox or the DMS when they say email me that's not your best foot forward H Chris goes I saw that thread too cringey Chris goes it's it's a bit sad how little effort it takes to stand out these days even sadder how few yeah again yes from a society standpoint it is sad from an individual standpoint it's

amazing because you look at that and you think oh I don't have to try that hard to to beat everybody like is that good for the world oh I don't think so is that good for you and your family yeah it's amazing nobody tries and amazing for you but it's bad for the world sure 100% all right I do a rapid fire and again thanks for everybody Chris thanks for posting that uh that that link uh to that podcast that that Aon just mentioned but Erin I do rapid fire last four questions okay um the first question I know you love your family but that's

not the answer for this okay what do you like to do outside of work for fun outside of your lovely family who love your wife and your kids y y out out side of work I don't even understand that concept um I don't know man I like to build stuff I I just really like to make stuff and so like for example this wall behind me does not it's really nice by the way I I was going to comment you it exists like it's not it looks fake but people think mine's fake too which is hilarious behind I'm in an apartment right now I rented

a one bedroom apartment are you serious at for my my co-working space which is BR that's brilli behind behind this wall are two giant windows that look out into the courtyard but I needed a place to film so I built a false wall 2x4s false wall okay that's impressive you're like my wife my wife does no Nails no screws touch the apartment at all but this is a false wall with pegboard and IKEA cabinets and now I have I have my perfect studio and so like I just like to build stuff whether it's digital or physical I I just I build stuff so no other

Hobbies besides just building uh I'm your typical Millennial male who doesn't know how to do anything with anything turn comes a handiness so my wife does all the handiness we have reverse gender uh roles in our household I do all the cleaning and stuff like that she does all the building so love it um Tom comes in here to get some attention of the convex Founders I found the CTO PhD thesis implemented into Python and shared a video with him that is how you do it my friend that opened the door to the next conversation ultimately I got a role leading developer experience boom yep

Tom and you can't you can't do that for every job but like if you want the job nobody else did that I guarantee you nobody else CL hey Tom uh I like this shoot me a DM i' love to bring you on the show to talk about this more yeah that's awesome shoot me a DM Tom we love to interview you about this uh second question if money was the same and because you're out on your own this question may not make the most interesting question but if money was the same and you couldn't do anything in Tech or you could do anything in sorry

I was reading Tom's email uh Tom uh shoot me DM um uh if you couldn't do something in Tech what would you do if money was the same oh man um probably some sort of regenerative farming um the guy yesterday that I interviewed literally said farming to no way what's up with tech people and farms and opening up their own so I wouldn't I wouldn't maybe regenerative farming isn't right cuz I wouldn't want to like I wouldn't want hom I wouldn't want to subsist off of the things that I farm but what I would want to do is buy a piece of like you know

50 acres of rundown degraded landscape in Texas somewhere and like spend a few years digging swes and planting trees and capturing water and like that's what I would want to do and that's what I plan on doing eventually you know don't tell my wife but that's what I plan on doing eventually is we're going to buy some property somewhere we're going to restore it to its like natural beauty Beauty and it's going to be amazing not because I'm like not because I'm like every you know I need to change the world but I'm like this seems like so much fun I would love to have

a a project that lasted three decades and I could go out there and like dig ponds and see how it restores to landscape that's what I would do RJ I live on a farm I get it for sure I'm just saying like like I it's just so funny that like people are like are leaving to go like go to go to live on a farm or open up their own coffee shop and and do and do their own thing so far Farm I got guys I live on a farm I understand I understand um third question any tools Technologies on the technical side Andor pieces

of content you've read watched lately that you want to give a shout out to tools Technologies um I have recently so Steve and I Steve the editor and I you know working on making videos and making videos better and everything like that he introduced me yesterday to a tool called quick shade which I don't recommend so he introduced me to Quick shade which was almost what I was going to recommend but instead I recommend display buddy because I can push this button right here and like my display goes back to full brightness and then I saw you po that yesterday yeah I can push this

button here and it goes dark and so I don't look like all blown out um so display buddy will help you control your external monitors brightness contrast volume resolution all of that um without having to like reach around and fuss with the buttons so display buddy is the better version of quick shade I love it I love it uh anything you've watched or read lately you want to give a shout out to man I watched the Steve Martin documentary this is not this is not Tech at all yeah yeah no this is why I like talking about because it's not Tech so I watched the

Steve Martin documentary Love Steve Martin grew up on Steve Martin you know Father of the Bride just was my child the first half there's a documentary in two parts um the first part is about his stand-up career which I didn't I didn't know anything about I was too young to know him as a stand-up comedian really really great really fun lots lots of great stuff the second half incredibly heavy and like really moving yeah it's very good and the thing that the thing that struck me was just how lonely he was and is and has been for so long and frankly like the thing that

stuck with me the most was he's um he's like 75 he's like 75 years old and he still talks about his dad yeah and like um how how his relationship with his dad wasn't great and it really hurt him and he's he's 75 and I'm just thinking like oh man being a dad's a pretty big deal yeah um to have like one of the one of the greatest funniest happiest most successful movie stars slash also most successful stand-up comedians of all time and he's 75 and talking about how he's trying to recover from Pains of like a distant father yeah good Lord yeah no I

mean and again I and and I I appreciate you being vulnerable this is this is why I slid in your DMs um but for for me I just I mean this a whole another conversation on fatherhood and stuff it's heavy oh man what a great what a great burden to bear but it's so is so heavy yeah I mean I I'm in I'm I'm in counseling working on on my and and trying to be a better father and man some days are good some days are bad right and and and you hear stuff like this on Netflix and or you hear interviews like this and

it's just like it just man it snaps sying in persective how heavy it is but also how beautifully heavy it is yeah for sure I mean on the other side you hear you hear other you know 60 70 80 year olds talk about their parents in a positive way and they're like they're long gone you know if you're 70 your parents are long gone and still to look back on that and think like have warm feelings about your dad it's like yeah so if you want to cry watch the second half of the Steve Martin documentary love just Dive Dive Right In man it's good

it's good yeah do you I'm curious as an epic content creator like yourself do you pull inspiration from these documentaries because because I because I I mean I I watch a fair amount of content yes 100% there's um I don't think one one of the most impactful books I ever read was um there's two of them there's one about Theodore Roosevelt and one about um Einstein and the one I read about Einstein it I was you know I was in college and it was I think it's a Walter Isaacson one and I'm reading this book about about Einstein and I'm just like weeping because of

the way that like it was like the the magic and the mystery and the stuff that like he saw in the universe I'm like that is to to be able to like be so fully immersed in work and find beauty in like this crazy crap that he was on about this relativity who knows what that is you know but he's like that is his beautiful like love language and the way that Walter isson wrote it I was just like man this is incredibly inspiring and if you want to if you really want to learn about like uh humility and work ethic and like pure love

of the game you got to watch the David Beckham documentary unbelievable documentary is UN it made me like Manchester United which again this a whole another conversation I think companies also by the way got a comment on Tik Tok from Ben yam who's a comedian once again Steve Martin on on on Netflix right Steve so go check that out Ben yam thanks for commenting um I I think and one thing I'm trying to do it gun we're not going to it's going to be a process is I think every if if you can't Vlog it up or if you can't document it video written blog

but I feel like like people want to know the process of Brands and I think there's a reason why like I'm watching um the Manchester City documentary right now the soccer documentary about winning them winning the treble last year and man Sports documentaries get me so excited but I'm like how can this apply to business and it's the same thing people just want to know all the behind the scenes on what's going on they do and if you watch if you watch that Beckham documentary which I highly recommend to people that don't care about sports like forget it happens to be in a sports setting

it is not about sports so if you if you watch that watch that documentary pay close attention um pay close attention to the part where he gets like he gets benched or let go or like um the team is mad at him like the you know I forget the old trap the the Sir Alex Ferguson is mad at him let him play or something won't even let him practice because he was like supposed to go on loan somewhere or was going to get traded somewhere so they won't even let Beckham practice and you know what he did he ran laps around he literally practiced on

the side that I mean I was like dude what a G man what a stud like to just show up and and just practice I think I I don't know if I could do that I don't know if I I think I had this view of Beckham as like a a a pretty Playboy same turns out he is he is pretty but he just he just loves to play the game and like man to have that kind of like passion to just want to play the game and to like do it right oh gosh it was like I was that was one of the best

documentaries I've seen strictly for that reason because he had the entire world handed to him in terms of like looks and fame and money and he just wants to play the game that's it God I love that I do too I love that I love that yeah we got a few comments uh you should check out Einstein's Dreams by Dr Allen Lightman oh interesting um uh somebody comments Aaron is everything I expected him to be also same as well I'm glad we had this interview Hard Knock is one of my favorites especially the team allows real access and the Beckham Beckham doc you want to

give David Beckham a big hug yeah me too again like and and you know you can tell he loves his family um you know that last few scenes with his wife I think was great um so yeah I'm yeah big big big fan um all right Maron last question we'll wrap up here again the comment sorry about your rapid fire I didn't quite get the memo on rapid my bad um uh so show was called guidance counselor 2.0 because we had guidance counselors a middle school high school and college but now was adults we don't really have a guidance counselor to turn to and ask

career-based questions what would be your biggest advice for young like if you can go back and tell young Aaron a piece of advice what would it be um everything that you're looking for is on the other side of your [Music] fear I love that I love that well y'all thank you again for hanging out with us today we appreciate it um uh please go connect with Aaron obviously as you can tell uh dude's probably one of the most uh uh real guys I've probably interviewed on this show ever so please definitely the most cryy guy that's for sure well same same I I cry at

Hallmark commercials over the holidays it's pretty brutal around the holidays so yeah um so comment um go go follow Aaron um thank you again for hanging out with us today um 9:30 a.m.

Central tomorrow I'll be live on the Unicorn finders page we're catching up a really cool startup it's a female entrepreneur in Nashville who secured a million dollars in funding in like a few hours based off her idea it's basically around Tech and fashion getting people fitted better um and leveraging Tech to do that especially women so tomorrow is going to be great 9:30 a.m. Central go check that out um otherwise Aon thank you my friend stay stay on so I can say bye to you backstage but y'all have a great one